Lesson Pages
Lesson Pages
There are two basic types of Lesson pages: Choice and Navagation. Most pages offer the student choices, "question pages" (related to Quizzes are the most common. Moodle calls another type of choice page "branch tables". Navigation pages create additional robust features that impact a student's choices. "End of Branch", "Start Cluster" and "End Cluster" are the Navigational pages.
In this section will cover the generic format for these types. We will focus upon the Choice pages format as seen by the teacher. The use of the specific pages will be referenced to other pages. A question page has all the elements of a Branch Table, plus the question pages has a few more features.
The number of choices editable by the teacher can be set under lesson settings, general, Maximum number of answers/branches. The default is 4 but it can be increased or decreased depending upon the current editing needs of the teacher.
Choice Pages - Branch (Branch Table)
Branch (we will simply call it Branch)pages have content and buttons at the bottom that students can select. Branch pages can serve as netural content pages that don't count as a question page in grade or lesson completion calculations.
The basic parts of a Branch page are: Page Title, Page Content, Description(#) and Jump(#). In the edit mode there is an edit toolbar filled with icons directly below the Page Title. At the bottom of the edit mode screen are buttons to redisply, save or cancel. Small yellow buttons with question marks are help links.
Page Title
The Page Title itself is used to located the page as we will learn in jumps or have learned in building our lesson -link-. The title can also be seen by the student.
Page Content
Page Content is where material is going to be presented to the student. Editing Page content will offer a more complete description for those not familiar with basic formating icons. Perhaps the simpliest form of content is text. Moodle also allows insertion of pictures of various types, links to documents or webpages. Not to mention blank tables, emoticons, and special text characters. And for the brave and HTML savy, there is a toggle that switches between HTML code and WYSIWYG (what you see it what you get).
In other pages you will read that Branch pages serve as an initial Table of Contents. You will read more about that in Descriptions and Jumps below.
Descriptions
Descriptions are the choices the student must make. In a branch page these show up as buttons below the page. They can be arranged vertically or horizontally in any branch page.
Jumps
Jumps determine what happens after a student makes a choice.
There is a pull down menu which lists some generic jumps like "next page", "this page" "previous page" and some special navigation pages we will discuss later. The number of entries will be every existing page title. The teacher selects the page that the student will jump after their choice.
Choice Pages - Question
Question pages have content and something for the student to answer or select. There can be a specific text responce for each specific answer. Question pages can be scored -link- in several ways. These last two features make them different from Branch pages.
There are many question types to select. -link- goes into each type in more detail. The help button next to Question type gives a good description of each. In Version 1.6, the question types are on tabs. Be sure to select the question type before starting your question or you could lose your work when you try to change it later. TIP: Often you can start a question, save it, then change it's type without losing your content section.
Title & Content
The title and content sections are the same as for a branch page. Again, the page title can be important, don't give away the answer!
In some learning situtations, the teacher will put lesson material in the content. At the bottom of the content section, they put the question the student must answer. In other lessons, the question will be the content.
Answer
Answers are the choices the student must make. In a question, these can take different forms and show up below the content section page. Each of the question types has its own type of answer. The help button next to Answer offers a good description of each type. The most common is mutiple choice. We will use this type in our examples.
The order of the answers will appear to be random to the students. In other words, two students looking at the same question, will see the answers in a different order.
There is also the ability to use all the content editing tools in each of the responces. For example, one answer could be a picture, another text.
The default for a question with all blank answers is "continue". When form permits, always enter the correct answer(s) first. Moodle does not like skipped answers.
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